Good Thursday everyone! Happy Yawm al Jumuah-Eve! :). I’ve been pretty busy and also a bit unfocused the last several days. Allah knows there’s plenty in the news to comment on, from a toxic spill in Hungary to bullying to firefighters letting a house burn down. No slow news days lately, with plenty of chaos and lots of “Beware: graphic content” videos.

I have been hearing a lot lately about the state of our nation’s schools. I’m living it, actually, as I have a fifth grader and a kindergartener, with three more to head to school in coming years. My 10 year old is BORED (his emphasis) in his math class because they are “learning” stuff that I taught him two years ago when I was homeschooling him. What does that tell you? Because I’m so overwhelmed with the baby and the toddler and life and all that, I can’t commit to homeschooling this year, but if Allah helps us so that we can get back to level ground financially and we can start to slow down a bit, I will think about doing it again next year. I hate the idea of making my kids do extra work at home after a full day of school, but I cannot tolerate the idea of leaving them in public school to underperform for the next however many years. We don’t have Islamic schools close and can’t afford private school. I’ve told my son that I won’t let him languish forever but this year he just has to be patient. InshAllah we’ll make a change in the upcoming school year. It’s so hard. I’m not terribly well organized so homeschooling is a challenge, but I know my son was learning with me at home and doing really well. I will look into homeschooling with other families in the area so we can work with each others’ kids and they will have a lot of social contact and not be isolated, inshAllah. But not now….

Baby Zaid has a routine appointment today. Alhamdulillah, he’s doing fine so it should be a quick visit. Then back home and back to the laundry! The one constant in my daily life, lol.

I can feel I’m in the middle of an anxiety attack again. I have that heaviness in my chest and it’s hard to focus and do anything. I’m getting better at fighting through it. I know there’s a difference between being anxious for a good reason (like the sheriff’s car in your rearview mirror when you can’t remember if your registration card is in the glove box) and the amorphous anxiety that’s based on bad brain wiring. This is the latter; I have nothing in particular to be anxious about. Just reminding myself of that helps, and trying to get through my usual routine. Forcing myself to do laundry, make the bed, pay bills. I’m going to look into kava kava and passionflower, two herbs that are supposed to help, but of course when breastfeeding you have to be oh so careful about what you ingest.

I have a lot of projects in my mind. Working on the children’s story, have my sister to do the illustrations, working on a thing for my cross stitch, wanting to ramp up the advice page – and hubby wants to get involved! He actually has been informally been the go-to guy for advice for all his friends for years, and now he’s thinking about us becoming a team and going life coaching and marriage counseling. A lot to work out, and we can’t actually move on the idea at the moment since he’s so busy at work, but it’s on our agenda. LOTS of stuff on our agenda, lol. Just have to chip away at everything day by day.

Speaking of stuff on the agenda, I’d better get lunch ready a bit early so when I am ready to take Zaid to the doctor I don’t get out the door late. Later, gators!